Richard Wagner in Bloomington, MN

It shouldn't take listeners long to get over the novelty of hearing
Wagner
on the piano. After all, piano transcriptions were the primary way opera, in general, and
specifically, were spread around Europe in the 19th century, and the composer's primary champion in this medium was none other than the greatest pianist of the age,
Franz Liszt
.
Liszt
's own transcription of the
Liebestod
from
Tristan und Isolde
is the pièce de résistance on this release by pianist
Nikolai Lugansky
; it is not terribly often played, and it has lost none of its imposing scope over the decades.
Lugansky
leads up to this with transcriptions by
Louis Brassin
, upon which
has elaborated, and with a quartet of transcriptions from
Götterdämmerung
that come from his own hand. These are quite artfully done, incorporating the familiar leitmotifs of the
Ring cycle
while filling them in with technically fearsome connective tissue.
has done nothing less than put the listener in the place of an audience that might have heard
play
in the composer's own day, and ideal sound from the small Scuola della Carità reproduces the aristocratic Paris salons where
would often have held forth. A bold, fresh release from
that made classical best-seller lists in early 2024. ~ James Manheim